Question

I like to use spaces for indentation rather than tabs; replacing tabs at the beginning of a line is easy in sed or vim:

s/^I/    /g

But if there are tabs within a line (pretend the spaces are the width of the tab char):

'foo'^I ^I  => 'bar',
'bazzle'^I  => 'qux',

Each tab doesn’t correspond to a set number of spaces to maintain the alignment. Anyone have a sly idea of how to replaces those tab characters with spaces while keeping the correct alignment?

Answer 1

In Vim:

:retab

or, if you have tabs after spaces:

:retab!